Character Creation 2.0

Among our many plans for feature improvements in the Legacy of Romulus expansion, the re-imagining of character creation was one of the most ambitious. Not content with a handful of small improvements, we sought to completely re-build the experience from the ground up! Our goals were to immerse the player with a thematic presentation and streamline the experience with a simplified visual interface.

Below, we’ll discuss some of our design challenges and how we went about solving them.

Choose your Faction!

One of the major changes to our character creation directly reflected a new gameplay innovation for Legacy of Romulus – the ability for a new character to start the game as a member of one of three distinct factions!

Our challenge was to put this critical choice front and center, while allowing a player to quickly and easily explore the different choices within each faction. Early mockups and designs placed great emphasis on the faction choice itself, but left it too removed from the meat of character creation. Species appearance, traits and class options remained isolated on separate screens.

Further concept iteration proved that we needed to allow players to quickly and easily observe the ramifications of their faction choice on other critical components. This tied directly into our next design challenge.

Concise Flow

From early on in our redesign process, our concepts and mockups fulfilled the high-level goal of thematic immersion. However, as noted above, they did not entirely meet our goal of simplification. Early mockups still required too much back and forth between selection screens when choosing a faction, class, and species.

The final iteration combined these options into a single interface, proving that simplest was best. Now players would be free to quickly jump from one faction, species and class combination to another for quick comparison – all without ever leaving a single screen.

Further, we wanted to enable players eager to enter the game to create a fully-fledged character with the minimum number of steps. That meant an experience with as few selection screens as possible. After a number of iterations, we were able to focus the entire character creation experience into just three distinct screen steps:

Faction, Race and Class Selection

Appearance

Background, Name and Confirmation

Visual Interface

Further supplementing the simplicity of flow was a new visual approach to selection, which we developed specifically to reduce dependence on purely text-based menus.

Our mantra from the beginning was “what you see is what you get” – choices were to be represented by images whenever possible. Large, expressive icons were designed to communicate Faction and Class options. On the Appearance page, costume choices were displayed with large, clear preview images, leaving no confusion as to what a player would select. The same was true for both Face and Hair options as well.

Choices formerly identified only by text or titles – unseen before being selected and applied – are all now easily previewed at a glance.

Selection Pre-sets

In addition, a series of “pre-set” options was critical to our goal of allowing a new player to easily navigate a streamlined interface, and emerge at the other end with a fully realized character.

Quickly creating a complete character meant providing the player with pre-packaged options up front. One example was that each species would now come with an ideal, pre-defined selection of traits. However, players wishing to customize this selection further would be able to re-spec their traits once in-game.

Our pre-set philosophy also meant offering costume options in complete outfits. Players would no longer need to root around in menus, searching for parts that “go together.” Now, a player can quickly browse through a catalog of outfits, pick the one they like, and apply it with a single button click!

Advanced Details Minimized by Default

Finally, in keeping with the goal of simplicity and ease of use, we were determined to avoid presenting new players with a phenomenon sometimes known as “the tyranny of choice”. This seemingly paradoxical situation occurs when a vast array of choices presented to a new user causes paralysis or anxiety in decision-making instead of clarity or satisfaction. Thus, we designed the first layer of interface to offer a limited number of clear, but attractive, choices, with the option for “more information” or “advanced” options underneath.

This allows the new user to first browse a smaller number of choices, gradually digging deeper for more details if they desire – or, simply jumping right into the action if they don’t! The last thing we wanted was for a new player to become “stuck” in the details of character creation if they just wanted to play the game.

However, it’s important to note that we’ve preserved all the details that experienced players have come to know and expect, accessible in the advanced tabs for head, body and uniform. This allows long-time players, curious newcomers, or detail-oriented tinkerers to adjust the myriad details of their character as they like.

Thematic Presentation

Finally, we wanted to wrap this all-new interface and flow in a variety of thematic trappings to help create the experience of the Star Trek universe. From UI to backgrounds, lighting, and ships, we wanted to envelop the user in the look and feel of this unique setting:

A new login screen overlooking an alien planet in deep space – designed to evoke the endless exploration of a place where no one has gone before.

Faction-specific backgrounds designed to evoke each faction’s personality through detailed props, lighting, and architecture, with a view into space to convey a sense of scope for the epic journey ahead.

Backgrounds looking onto space and the Faction’s signature starting ship – these were meant to underscore the important duality between the captain and his ship, or between space combat and away team missions.

New character selection – also meant to evoke the vast scope and feel of exploring the Star Trek universe, this composition pays homage to the pantheon of great Star Trek movie posters by featuring both your crew and starship!

It’s been a thrill and a pleasure to redesign the Character Creator for Star Trek Online. Along the way we benefited greatly from iteration and feedback, and we now look forward to our fans experiencing it in full as we prepare to unveil our upcoming expansion – Legacy of Romulus!

It's much prettier and easier to work with if you're not in eyefinity or surround but creating a character at 5760x1200 can be challenging when the character display goes blank zooming out and the interface doesn't scale to multiple displays.

While the Character select screen is a nice touch, i'm REALLY disappointed that all this is was a UI change. There really didn't seem to be any actual changes aside from the way the screen looks. all of the old issues are still there, just under a new wrapping, and one of which is even in the Promotional Picture with the liberated Romulan Borg. If they "RE-DID" the Character creator, why is there still that horribly awkward line at the neck? That was an issue from the first few months, and it's still there, sticking out like a sore Romulan thumb. This isn't Character Creator 2.0..... It's not even CC 1.5...
This entire Legacy of Romulus seems to be more empty promises on top of something that that was great enough with out having to lie about it.

I am so sick of ungrateful feedback,...yes I understand some of it is needed.... BUT IT IS WONDERFUL!!! remember IT IS FREE. I love the face images in the menu bar of RACE. I can not wait till the end of May!!!

All this info is really good and all, and I appreciate how they're working on improving the new player experience for all factions, but there's just one thing I'd love for them to state: that they're actually adding new music to the game. You know, proper Star Trek music that isn't that same damned song that plays out in sector space. They're contracted with CBS, and thus should have the ability to use some of the music from the series and games, so please, for the love of god, use it!

following what sigwolf33 stated, for the entirety of STO's lifespan, Cryptic had to literally fight with both CBS and Paramount for every little piece of the franchise.
Personally... I have been disappointed, if not downright infuriated, with Paramount and CBS, and how they handle Star Trek, over the last decade. Here is a chance to bring in a whole new legion of fans, who might not have watched the show otherwise. Here is a chance to reach a whole new audience than before. But no, lets basically hold the fans hostage for more money from pretty much the last piece of the franchise still living.
What is CBS's problem with releasing (at least some) of the music? Are they afraid they are going to lose CD Soundtrack sales? When was the last time anyone actually purchased one? It makes no sense, even business-wise. And hell, if they released the music in the game, that might actually entice people TO buy the soundtracks.
CBS and Paramount, take heed. Holding things back can only serve to hurt you and your company. Throw a bone to STO now and then, and you may find yourself earning more profit. I know you want more profit. Open your eyes and show a little initiative, and in the meantime, show us that you actually care about possibly your greatest franchise ever.

I love the idea of the "movie poster" concept for character selection! Suggestions: could the view of the ship be more from the front and below, like this: http://cosblog.cosmelentertainment.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Movie-Poster-Star-Trek-5-The-Final-Frontier.jpg I think it would give it more of that "movie poster" feel. :-)

I see you're jumping on the "use large icons for everything" bandwagon. It looks OK, but I've never really had a problem with the character creator UI before. I believe in the philosophy of "if it's not broken, don't fix it," but you're the ones with your hands on the controls here. I hope you've revamped more than just the UI. I hope we're finally going to be getting more customization options. As it stands, and as many of us have griped about on the forums, everyone looks more or less the same because you can only do so much with the sliders. I hope you've taken the time to add more sliders, possibly even more than just a couple "starter" heads, to give us the ability to customize our characters more fully and not have everyone look related to each other. In my opinion, that's the part of the character creator that's needed work, more so than the UI, which has always worked for me in the past.

Also, I feel the editor treats the players as if they are "stupid." I agree with some of the comments about the advance features that are not forthcoming in the design for a new player. The new editor gives the first impression that the visual options are the only choices. Personally, I take my hair and shoes very seriously in every game. Neverwinter and Champions Online are the same way with their character editor. The advance features are not very forthcoming. I see new players constantly coming into the games think that was their only choices. Thank you.

As weird as the whole thing sounds I've actualy seen the whole "wahh too many choices this sucks" thing happen in person. I tried to show a friend Champions and that's more or less what he said "there's too many options, this sucks". I don't get it either but I guess as odd as as it seems, it does happen.

I like the new look for the editor, but I do not like game developers picking choices for me. Normally, I skip the preset and preselect items in any game I play. Also, I find it kind of insulting. All the preset options are ugly. I rather sit through the editor and set my features myself. Thank you.